James Siemens

With few exceptions, the field of Eastern Christian studies has primarily been concerned with historical-critical analysis, hermeneutics, and sociology. For the most part it has not attempted to bring Eastern Christian philosophy into serious engagement with contemporary thought. This volume seeks to redress the matter by bringing the Eastern Christian tradition into a meaningful dialogue with contemporary philosophy. It boasts a diverse group of scholars―specialists in ancient philosophy, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy―who engage with a wide range of pressing issues. Among other things, it addresses such topics as contemporary atheism, the metaphysics of action, religious epistemology, the philosophy of language, bioethics, the philosophy of race, and human rights. In so doing, it aims to introduce contemporary readers to unique perspectives and novel arguments often overlooked by mainstream anglophone philosophy.

Theodore of Tarsus served as archbishop of Canterbury for twenty-two years until his death in 690, aged eighty-eight. Because the only significant record we had of Theodore was that contained in Bede's Historia, until recently it was very difficult to say anything about his life before this appointment, and even more difficult to determine anything about his thought. All of that changed in the last half of the twentieth century, when the discovery of some biblical glosses from Canterbury was revealed and the ensuing scholarship uncovered more of Theodore's work than had previously been known. The Laterculus Malalianus is a text that benefited from treatment in this period. This present work examines the Laterculus for what it has to say about the person and work of Christ, and establishes that Theodore's main theological inspiration was Irenaeus of Lyons and the concept of recapitulation, even while he cast his thought in language heavily drawn from the Syriac East, and Ephrem the Syrian in particular. The volume represents a contribution to our understanding of the early medieval theological project in Britain, the transmission of eastern Mediterranean thought in the early medieval West and, ultimately, of the work of Theodore of Tarsus. James Siemens continues to research theological questions arising from the encounter between the Greek and Semitic East and Latin West through the late antique and early medieval periods. He is an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University, and director of the nascent Theotokos Institute for Catholic Studies.

As an original composition if the seventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, it is reasonable to expect that, writing less than a generation after his death, Bede might have known the Laterculus Malalianus, despite there having been no acknowledgment of the text by him, and no discernment by Bede's readers of its influence on him even up to the present time. Recent analysis of the Laterculus, however, has given cause to reconsider this oversight, as exegetical motifs that appear almost nowhere else across the tradition are developed in the Laterculus and taken up in significant waya by Bede. The purpose of this paper is to set out these exegetical coincidences and propose that, in light of them, the Laterculus Malalianus deserves to be considered among the sources Bede drew on as he set about producing his own considerable work.

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica makes it clear that Theodore of Tarsus, the seventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, is a figure who should command an immense amount of interest. His learning and cosmopolitan formation call upon the scholar to ask what it is that he contributed to the English Church in his time and beyond. Yet interest in Theodore as a theologian has been lacking to date, most likely due to the limited amount of material attributable to him. Jane Stevenson’s work on the anonymous Laterculus Malalianus in the early 1990s suggested Theodore as the most likely author. That this suggestion has proven consistent with other, cumulative evidence of Theodore’s life and work makes the Laterculus an invaluable text for the student investigating his theology. The following paper seeks to present the theological themes of the text, especially as they relate to the person and work of Christ, and to introduce the reader to Theodore of Tarsus as a figure of interest in the study of early medieval Christology.